Blindness (novel)

In 1998, Saramago received the Nobel Prize for Literature, and Blindness was one of his works noted by the committee when announcing the award.The novel follows the misfortune of a handful of unnamed characters who are among the first to be stricken with blindness, including an ophthalmologist, several of his patients, and assorted others, who are thrown together by chance.After a lengthy and traumatic quarantine in an asylum, the group bands together in a family-like unit to survive by their wits and by the good fortune that the doctor's wife has escaped the blindness.The first part of the novel follows the experiences of the central characters in the filthy, overcrowded asylum where they and other blind people have been quarantined.Conditions degenerate further as an armed clique gains control over food deliveries, subjugating their fellow internees and exposing them to violent assault, rape, and deprivation.The doctor's wife is the de facto leader of their small group, although in the end, she often serves their disabled needs and acts as a nurse to them.When the car thief gropes her on the way to the lavatory, she kicks him with a heeled shoe – giving him a wound which will eventually lead to his death.The girl with the dark glasses assumes a motherly role for him, as she takes care of him and ensures his safety.When the ward of hoodlums begins to demand that the women sleep with them in order to be fed, the first blind man's wife volunteers to go, in solidarity with the others.This ward extorts valuables from the other internees in exchange for food and, when the "goods" (such as bracelets and watches) run out they begin to rape the women.[2] Like most works by Saramago, Blindness contains many long, breathless passages in which commas take the place of periods, quotation marks, semicolons, and colons.The characters are instead referred to by descriptive appellations such as "the doctor's wife", "the car thief", or "the first blind man".Given the characters' blindness, some of their names seem ironic ("the boy with the squint" or "the girl with the dark glasses").However, there are some signs that hint that the country is Saramago's homeland of Portugal: the main character is shown eating chouriço, a spicy sausage, and some dialogue in the original Portuguese employs the familiar "tu" second-person singular verb form (a distinction absent in most of Brazil).[3] In 2007 the Drama Desk Award Winning Godlight Theatre Company[4] staged the New York City theatrical premiere of Blindness at 59E59 Theaters.